5 recruiter mega-fails that will cost you money. And your job.

We all know recruiters need to adapt. That is now trite to say. So then, why are so many recruiters around the world still stuck in the same tactics that they used in 1999?

That won’t be sustainable. In fact recruiting 2009 style won’t cut it either.

What do I mean? Who am I talking about?

If you want to know if I am talking about you, rate yourself against these 5 'dinosaur-recruiting' activities, and see how you shape up.

1: Do you hide behind email? Do you avoid real life conversations? In fact, are you so stuck in old-school paradigms that you don’t even realise that what you are doing is a massive missed opportunity? You take your job briefs by email. That's it. An emailed brief is good enough to get you working. You attach two resumes to an email, and bang it off to your client. And wait. And pray. For a response. You email a job description to a candidate, instead of a full briefing and gearing on the phone, or face to face. Recruiters like this do not seek out the opportunity to ‘engage’ when they can. And engagement means the opportunity to influence. And influencing is everything in consultative recruitment.

2: Do you focus only on ‘active’ candidates? Is your default action to bang an advert on a job board? If that, and your database is all you have got in your ‘candidate sourcing toolbox’, you are up that famous creek. You need to add e-sourcing and deep Internet searching skills. You must know how to seek out talent, headhunt, engage, and seduce. You will need to build a personal brand and a community on social media that makes you a ‘talent magnet.

See Greg talk about the 5 recruiter mega-fails

3: Do you suck at social media? Specifically, are you in one of these camps? You deride social media as trivial and a waste of time, or ‘too new’ for you, and you ignore it all together. Or you love social media, spend hours on it, but in fact all you are doing is wasting time and avoiding the real grunt work that all recruiting requires.

4: Do you love meetings? Dinosaur recruiters do. And administration too. And endless Internet browsing. Not 'wasting time' on the net exactly. But looking at client websites and trawling the database for ‘perfect’ candidates. But really it’s all just avoidance. Internal, banal, non-productive tactics, possibly at a subconscious level, which allow avoidance of the difficult tasks that need to be done, now.

5: Are you resistant to change? Examine yourself deeply now. Be honest. Many of today’s recruiters are more than resistant. They actively sabotage change. Because it scares them. Shows them up as Recruiting Neanderthals. Fresh ideas are crushed, or ridiculed, or ignored. If new ideas are successful, it is put down to ‘luck’. Training sessions are avoided or sulked through, because you know, “I am so busy, I don’t have time for this”. Recognise any of this, dear reader?

Adapt, adjust, recalibrate, upskill, reskill. Whatever you wish to call it. But do it to thrive. Ignore it and die.

Thanks, Greg. I don't like the whole "active" vs. "passive" split- I preffer "fast" vs" slow". I don't have time for "slow" candidates- I need people who are right and ready right now (RARRN), and if they aren't - who they know who is RARRN.